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Welcome everyone. Thank you for joining us tonight. Thank you for being here at Café
College, our host site for our town hall meeting tonight. We're here tonight because I think
all of us recognize that in this 21st century that brain power is the new currency of success
and those communities that create it will be those that thrive and prosper in our global
economy and those that don't will have very grave challenges. We want San Antonio fundamentally
to be one of those cities that thrives. All of us have to come together to give our young
people a chance. And if we do that, we are going to lead the country where we need to
go. If we don't, we are going to continue to struggle with high unemployment rates,
continuously lose jobs moving overseas and so we are at a fork in the road, and I think
what happens here in San Antonio doesn't just have implications for this city and this community,
it has national implications and whatever we can do to be a good partner, to listen
and learn and support the leadership and the courage and the creativity here, me and my
team are absolutely committed to doing that. How can we as citizens ensure that endowments,
both public and otherwise, go to making college more affordable through higher education subsidies,
etc. So I think that investment, again public and private - whatever it might be, we have
to lead by example and you guys need to put a lot more pressure on us to make sure we
are doing the right thing. That doesn't happen enough at any of those levels - local, state
or at the national level. With an estimated amount of 65,000 undocumented students graduating
from American high schools and who are eligible to attend college, where does the Dream Act
stand in the White House efforts to increase the amount of college graduates? Congress
is pretty dysfunctional these days. You guys read the papers and watch TV; there's not
much going on productive there. We are seeing lots of leadership at the state level and
many states, including Texas, are starting to move towards in state tuition for undocumented
students. That's an important step in the right direction, but again, we at the national
level, have to step up here. So I don't have a time frame. I wish I could say it was going
to pass Congress tomorrow. I don't know that, but I can just promise you that we are going
to keep fighting as hard as we can until this is passed. So we need Washington to lead.
Washington is not leading right now. States are stepping up which is encouraging, and
the private sector is stepping up. But again, I absolutely put it on us - this has to get
done and we are not there yet and I apologize for it. And the final thing I'll say is that
these are really tough economic times so everybody - governments, families, school districts
- everyone is having to make tough choices right now. But budgets aren't just numbers
- budgets reflect our values and we either value education or we don't. We lock people
up in this country. We put them in jail for, I don't know, 30, 40, 50, $60,000 a year.
And we never have that debate. That just happens. That's an investment we're happy to make.
But if we try to increase education funding two or $300, that's like WWIII. There's all
kinds of debate about that. Why is that? Why are we so happy to lock folks up for huge
amounts of money but not do the right thing in the front end so they can become productive
citizens and keep them out of incarceration. It doesn't make sense to me.